[The Dwarf Blacksmith looks at you with satisfaction: "You've made a smart choice. Indeed, a weapon is indispensable for an adventurer. I have three ready-made weapon molds here, you can choose one."]
The three options are Mithril Hammer, Mithril Sword, and Mithril Bow.
There's no hesitation here, Mithril Bow!
[The Dwarf Blacksmith takes out a Lightning Snake Tendon from the warehouse. This is one of the necessary bowstring materials for forging a Mithril Bow, which can make the arrow paralyze the target after hitting it. Considering this is your first time forging here, the blacksmith indicates that he can provide this Lightning Snake Tendon free of charge. However, you must pay 10 years of lifespan as a forging fee. Will you pay immediately?]
"Ten years...."
Mu You stroked his chin.
The dwarf offered him an extra material, but the forging itself cost ten years of lifespan. Honestly, it was a bit expensive... but it was still cheaper than buying weapons directly from the store.
Thinking about the weapons in the store that easily cost hundreds of years of lifespan, and then looking at the mere need for ten years of lifespan now, it didn't seem to be that difficult to accept.
"Pay it!"
[You've agreed to the dwarf's price. Lifespan -10, remaining lifespan is 48 years.]
[The dwarf saw you out of his blacksmith shop, and then took your Mithril and entered his workshop...]
The text stops here.
Mu You tried to enter the blacksmith shop again, but a pop-up message appeared.
[The forging work will take more than ten hours. Please wait patiently...]
"Ten hours, looks like I won't get it until this afternoon..."
Mu You exhaled a sigh.
He had used up his last bit of energy and intended to log out directly, but another pop-up appeared in the game.
[As you walked out of the blacksmith shop, you saw an owl descending from the sky, landing on your shoulder, and stuffed a parcel it was carrying in its beak into your hand.]
[You opened the parcel, inside was a brand new "Star Spirit Dictionary".]
"Oh? The delivery has arrived!"
Mu You perked up. The game text early in the morning said the package would arrive within 24 hours. Unexpectedly, it arrived in less than eight hours, and it really was 'delivered directly to the hand', without any ambiguity.
Owl courier, very reliable!
Mu You clicked on the 'owl' entry, and in the popped-up options, he gave it a five-star rating.
Then he clicked on 'Star Spirit Dictionary'.
A thick hardcover book appeared in Mu You's hand. The deep blue cover was adorned with flashy runes. Upon looking inside, it was filled with dense Star Spirit symbols.
However, once Mu You just looked at the Star Spirit text in the book, the corresponding Chinese translation would automatically appear in his mind.
"A conscious fully automatic translation dictionary?"
Mu You looked strangely at the text in the book, once again deeply feeling the magic's wonders.
Next, Mu You took out paper and a pen, starting from the first page, and began to seriously study the book.
Recitation had never been his strong suit, let alone these Star Spirit language symbols, the structure was so abstract, a bit like the combination of Arabic and Greek, both of which happen to be recognized as some of the hardest languages to learn on Earth.
Arabic word formation rules are unique and complex, allowing a root word to derive numerous words of the same form; Greek is known for its weird mixed syllables, supplemented by a rich inflection structure, just reciting it is a considerable challenge to the human tongue.
The Star Spirit language was more potent, taking into account both's characters. Its obscurity and difficulty-level far exceeded all human languages!
As you can imagine, for someone with no foundational knowledge of Star Spirit language, trying to learn this language from scratch would be a ruthless slaughter of brain cells.
Thankfully, after his intelligence attribute upgrade, Mu You's understanding and memorizing abilities have remarkably improved, accelerating his memorization rate, making him not discouraged right from the start.
However, even so, it took him a whole ten hours just to barely recognize the language structure of Star Spirit language and 37 basic symbols.
In short, he could finally understand the table of contents of this dictionary now...
By the end, Mu You was moved to tears of joy: ten hours just to grasp how to use this dictionary, you can tell how high the entry-level difficulty of this language is.
After a bitter laugh, Mu You opened the game and took out that 'Watchman's Diary'.
After a day of intensive studies, it was time to test the results.
Spreading both books out on the desk, Mu You took out a pen and paper and began translating the diary's contents word for word.
"January 3, sunny."
"Today is my first night watch, the village is ink-black at night, if it weren't for the pumpkin lantern helping me with lighting, I'd not dare to step out of the house, I always feel like... something in the surrounding darkness... staring at me...."
...
By timeline count, the writer of the diary seems to have become a watchman just half a year earlier.
The initial few diary entries are a bit longer, but they don't differ much from an elementary school student's diary, which is mostly about some minor incidents encountered during night watch, portrayed thrillingly. However, all of them turned out to be self-inflicted scares in the end.
After translating seven or eight pages with no incidents, Mu You lost all patience, so he directly flipped towards the last page, deciding to start translating backward.
As a result, he was immediately surprised!
The last page's date was marked June 17th, if both dates of the worlds correspond, then it was just a week ago.
Mu You looked at the diary's content.
"June 17, cloudy."
"Recently, I keep hearing some strange sounds, as if someone is crying for help...."
"Initially, I didn't pay attention, thinking it was just hallucinations from overworking...."
"Until tonight, while I was patrolling near the cemetery outside the village, the vague voice, suddenly sounded in my ear with immense volume: 'Help... someone, please save me... Master... save me...'"
"I tried to communicate with the voice, asking if it was buried in a grave. However, the voice informed me that it was a familiar, raised by a wizard, who got lost from its master due to an accident, and was swept away by a strange current, ending up in a completely unfamiliar place."
"I asked it where it ended up, it answered me with a very perplexing statement. "
"It said it was in a forest of high-rise buildings made of steel, surrounded by fools... and plenty of roaring metal boxes on the road... the metal boxes swallowed the fools, then started to run..."
Huh????
Mu You was stunned.
He had been happily reading it like a short suspense story, but the plot seemed to veer toward a strange direction suddenly.
Fools... that refers to humans, right?
Then 'high-rise buildings, a jungle of steel, surrounded by fools'... that indicates being in a city among humans?
And the 'metal boxes,' 'swallowing the fools, then running'... Is that about cars?
So, this is saying a pet from the world of magic has somehow, mysteriously ended up on Earth?